


Maternity Jeans, Never Used

by KinoGlowWorm



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Body Image, Day 3: Maternity Clothes, Emotional Hurt, It's Not Really Important, Knock Yuuri Up Week, M/M, Miscarriage, Mpreg, Reflection, i have no explanation for why, it's not totally bleak ok?, pregnancy loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-14
Updated: 2017-12-14
Packaged: 2019-02-14 15:53:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13011117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KinoGlowWorm/pseuds/KinoGlowWorm
Summary: They weren’t even nice jeans. The soft, black band at the top didn’t really make any sense with the dark-wash denim, but Yuuri supposed it wasn’t really meant to be seen. By the time these jeans would have been relevant, they would have been paired with long, flowing tops every time, the kind designed to mask the awkward change in the lines of his body, to drape just so across the midriff and its round, growing swell.





	Maternity Jeans, Never Used

**Author's Note:**

> With apologies to Hemingway's apocryphal six word story.

They weren’t even nice jeans. The soft, black band at the top didn’t really make any sense with the dark-wash denim, but Yuuri supposed it wasn’t really meant to be seen. By the time these jeans would have been relevant, they would have been paired with long, flowing tops every time, the kind designed to mask the awkward change in the lines of his body, to drape just so across the midriff and its round, growing swell.

Yuuri had been more looking forward to the kind of outfit that said, “Fuck you, look at my belly. It’s big and you can fucking deal.”

He'd had actually been surprised how comfortable he’d been with his growing body, in a way he’d never been before. Even when parts of him were too tender and sensitive to touch. Even when his weight was up sixteen pounds from where it was twelve weeks ago. He’d already been right on the cusp of where his in-season weight reached off-season levels at the beginning of that. Even the sticker shock of that didn’t phase him at the time. 

Viktor had taken such delight in surrounding Yuuri with treats over the last few months, coach’s hat set aside as he played the doting partner instead. The steamed fish and vegetables were still there, but alongside them were the dumplings and desserts that were usually reserved for special occasions, for celebrations. Each meal felt like one, though. Even the confusing ones at four AM. Yuuri had more than once accused Viktor of talking to the dumplings when he snuggled up to Yuuri’s belly and started whispering to it in a voice just loud enough to be clear that it was for Yuuri’s benefit as much as his own. They’d even started referring to it as “the dumpling.”

Yuuri had eaten his mother’s katsudon once a week for the last six weeks. He’d had the same satisfaction as if he’d won a medal each time. Somehow, it was easier to believe it was happening when he was eating, which made eating that much more appealing. 

He wondered how much of the weight he’d lose with the procedure next week, and how much would be up to him to work off before it came around to trying again. 

The jeans had been Yuuko’s idea, about two weeks ago. She’d caught Yuuri trying to surreptitiously unbutton his pants while sitting on the train. She was one of the very small handful of people who knew, and she knew him too well besides. Even as she tried to wrangle the triplets around her, she caught the look on his face just after, the awkward mix of relief and worry that people would know his pants were undone without knowing why. They weren’t even his in-season pants. But even that discomfort was only physical, bypassing the shame that had always come before from ill-fitting clothes.

He dropped the jeans limply onto the bed beside him. That tightness had been one of the first things that really made him believe it was true. All the rest of it - the exhaustion, the soreness, the hunger masquerading as vague nausea - was too easy to explain away as circumstantial. The labwork was harder to dispute, but blood and urine was just that. Any story it told was one that was written on a page or a screen; not one that was written on his skin. Not yet, at least.

Yuuko complained about the stretch marks that wrapped around her belly after the triplets, but Yuuri had quietly envied them for years, since before he had really even thought about it in terms of wanting his own child. The scarred fingers of stretch marks already cradled the edges of his own hips; a combined gift of a teenage growth spurt and the off-season softness of his belly reasserting itself. Yuuko’s, at least, seemed honestly gotten to him. Yuuri had imagined himself in her position, confidently explaining them away: “Oh, well, you know what children do to your body.”

Even holding the strange jeans up to look at them in the store, Yuuri had felt like something was wrong. But if he wasn’t ready to tell most people about his pregnancy, he was even less willing to confide his uncertainty about it. Besides, what was he supposed to say? I’m worried because I don’t feel low-grade like shit all the time anymore?

Not that he was uncertain about wanting it to be true; he had surprised even himself with how confident he felt about being ready for parenthood. Instead, the same nagging feeling that had followed him around for most of his life, the one that wouldn’t let him believe in good things happening to him, had taken up this cause with full force. The feeling that told him to hold his dreams at arm’s length when they seemed too close to coming true. It had whispered in his ear at every competition, whether he had won or he had bombed. He knew better than to believe it, but it wasn’t wrong every time, either. 

That voice had kept him from telling almost anyone about it. Viktor hadn’t been able to contain himself and told a wide swath of his friends and family almost immediately after they had found out. They were all on different continents, though. The distance made it easier somehow. 

Yuuri had told Yuuko and his mother. That was it. 

Yuuko had been so thrilled when he’d told her, jumping straight into stories about how sick she was with the triplets and all the moments where she was convinced she had a bellyful of angry aliens rather than tiny humans, poking their sharp edges into all parts of her. He wasn’t sure how he was going to tell her it was off. 

His mother had surprised him when he’d told her this morning, just the two of them as they worked through folding up a load of clean towels. Apparently she’d been through her own miscarriage, sometime between Mari and him being born, though it was earlier on than this was. When he asked why she had never mentioned it, she had simply asked him, with that gentle smile of hers, when the right time would have been. Yuuri didn’t have an answer for that. 

He hadn’t even told Mari or his father. He’d tried, a couple times, but his mouth came up dry on each occasion. Viktor had offered to start the conversation with them, to say for him the words that stuck like wet paper on Yuuri’s tongue. But he also listened to Yuuri when he said he wasn’t ready. Next week. He had planned to tell them next week. Once he had proof that this wasn’t just something his mind had managed to dream up, despite all evidence to the contrary. Once he had proof that he wasn’t going to break anyone else’s heart with a false start.

Yesterday was supposed to be the proof: a heartbeat, a tiny shadow of a figure dancing inside of him. Instead there was just an empty space that kept growing to accommodate something that had apparently given up long ago, but which his body still seemed to refuse to let go.

He winced as he felt the tears building up in his eyes again. He was past the big, wracking sobs that had come out as soon as he’d gotten home yesterday and buried himself in bed. He’d held it together long enough to send Viktor to the grocery for something. He couldn’t even remember now what he’d asked for, only that it was easier than asking to be alone. 

Yuuri had held it together through each of the appointments yesterday, his neutral face a matter of pride as he talked with each of the doctors and nurses, with the ultrasound tech, the receptionists who checked him in and out. Viktor had been the one with tears on his face when Yuuri was up on the table being examined, but he probably would have been crying even if it had been good news. If it had been good news, Yuuri might have been crying, too. Those tears wouldn’t have been a burden on anyone else.

Yuuri had been over the worst of it when Viktor came home and found him cocooned in the heavy quilt on their bed, curled tightly into himself. Viktor slipped in behind him and wrapped himself around Yuuri and his blankets, and it had started all over again. They’d cried together there holding each other until they’d fallen asleep, the afternoon sun laying warm fingers around them as it angled itself through the window.

The tears had come and gone since then, almost at random. They seemed silly, on some level; the ultrasound had shown that there wasn’t even really anything with a shape worth grieving in there, just shreds of tissue that had barely been recognizable under extreme magnification. He could almost feel them sitting inside of him now, in a way he never could when he thought they were becoming a person. 

There had only been a few brief moments when he’d allowed himself to imagine what it might be like past this point; imagining the alien feet poking at his skin from the inside like Yuuko had told him about so many times, brief glimpses of what it might be like to cradle that tiny person against himself. Imagining what it might mean to show up at the beginning of the skating season in the fall, proud of his unignorable belly, what New Year’s would look like with a newborn. 

Those felt too much like a promise he wasn't sure he could keep though. They felt like guilty indulgences in the moment, the way imagining meeting Viktor once had. He tried to keep himself in the moment, putting maybe too much value on each rice ball he pulled out of the fridge after waking up in the middle of the night, each wave of nausea that sent him sitting with his head between his legs, each time his pants didn't quite fit right. That much, at least, felt real.

The pants had been on clearance; it’s not as if he could return them. It would be a waste to throw away a garment that had never been worn before. Yuuri hadn’t even tried them on in the changing room at the store. They wouldn’t have fit right now anyway. Not the way they were supposed to. Not even with the firm rise in his belly that had pushed him to undo his pants on the train, that would still be with him for the next few days.

Yuuri folded the pants neatly, smoothing the creases out across his lap. Maybe he was too hasty thinking about how he could get rid of them. There was nothing about this situation that suggested any difficulty in him getting pregnant again later. The doctor had said that they don’t really even worry until this happens at least three times. Give it another cycle, and then they were clear to try again. Maybe he’d have a use for these at some point anyway. He just couldn’t look at them right now. 

_They really are hideous_ , Yuuri thought as he tucked the unworn pants into a far corner of the closet’s upper shelf. Next time, he promised himself, he’d find something that fit his style when it came time.

**Author's Note:**

> I can't say I was planning to write anything for Knock Yuuri Up Week, but these themes have been on a my mind a lot recently, and I had sudden inspiration late tonight to bang something out for Day 3. 
> 
> So, it turns out that miscarrying is this kind of secret society that a lot of people you know are already part of. I found that out when it happened to me last month, much the way it happened here. I'm still figuring out how to talk about it, but if you can't process your own awkward stories in fanfiction what is even the point?


End file.
